The great goat escape

Regular readers will recall that I recently stalked, er, assisted, a woman in finding a home for her wayward goat.

Eavesdropping in a local salon led me to a woman who had a goat that needed a home and there we were — a home in need of a goat.

Can you can say “kismet?”

Two weeks later Gertie was delivered to us. The moment we saw her, our hearts simply melted.

Gorgeous goat

This, my friends, is one good looking goat. Gertie is a gorgeous chocolate brown Nubian. If you aren’t prepared for the sweet face, lovely lashes, and meltingly sweet expressions, you can really be caught off guard. Gorgeous.

Of course, her stunning good looks should have been our first clue: I have long been convinced of the brilliance of God’s plan. He makes anything particularly demanding: puppies, babies, celebrities, cute because he knows they are going to be high-maintenance and their looks may be the only thing keeping them in your good graces some days.

Gertie would prove no exception.

Granted, I cannot say we weren’t warned. Gertie’s former owners had indicated they needed to relocate her because she kept getting out of their pen. Their pigmy goat pen. Flush with a delusional sense of accomplishment apropos of nothing and centered almost entirely on keeping track of our own goat, Pikachu, who is so low-maintenance and easy-going as to be almost sloth like, I didn’t consider for a moment that we would have any problem keeping Gertie contained.

Clearly we are savvy and experienced goat owners.

Hello Houdini

Then Gertie arrived. Within minutes of acclimation to her new surroundings, she seemed quite pleased with her digs. Her previous owners exclaimed over our lush, green pastures and sheer amount of space afforded our goats. So busy patting ourselves on the back for a seamless transition were we, that we failed to notice immediately that Gertie had other ideas.

Clearly ours was a nice place to visit, but she didn’t intend to live here. Accordingly, it took Gertie about a nanosecond to easily duck under a three-strand electric fence! She did is so smoothly that we had to put her back in the fence and spy on her to really confirm the feat as we watched her do it again. And again. And again.

See a pattern here yet?

Credit

To her credit she was not so much running away from us as running to us. Each escape featured Gertie making a beeline across the yard to our daughter’s waiting arms. If goats could speak, she seemed to be saying, “Finally! I found you! That was a close one! That wire, there, slowed me up for a moment; you’ll want to do something about that!”

We couldn’t help but question if Gertie was an exceedingly clever escape artist — a James Bond of the goat world — or was Pikachu just a simpleton?

Perhaps all those years we’d been less savvy and accomplished goat owners and more the owners of an exceedingly uninspired goat?

Friends have made us feel better by indicating that, perhaps, Pikachu knew a good gig when he had it and realized early that escape, if not futile, was at least fruitless — literally.

Our pasture encompasses an old orchard and, as such, is rather a nirvana of the goat world. One could imagine Pikachu wondering why Gertie, poor silly girl, would ever want out?

Two hours of cold-rain, soaked fence checking later, (the things we do for our animals) our borders were secure.

Rock

Today Gertie seems to have settled in and stares placidly at the fence as if knowing that all the good stuff is inside with her. She has a sweet little barn, acres of lush pasture, woods and a magical old orchard in the back from which apples and pears seem to fall from the sky.

She is also somewhat the rock star of the goat world — featuring daily visits from our daughter and friends who dote on her. Our daughter has taken to calling her “G-Girl” and her companion, Pikachu, “P.”

She is delivered daily treats and there is hard lobbying to provide Gertie with her own Facebook page, for her “fans.”

“G-Girl and P” live pretty large. Like I said, rockstars.

They say most things in life are all about who you know and that sounds just about right. By opening my ears, mouth and mind to a passing conversation, I opened our hearts (and closed our fences) to our Gertie.

Sometimes it can be a downright blessing to get somebody’s goat. Pikachu and Gertie say hello to their fans, although rumors of a world-tour remain unconfirmed at this time.